BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Category: challenge

On May 30th, after months of preparation, the very first #AquaHacking in Canada came to a close! IBM was a large corporate sponsor of the Aquahacking event where teams submitted applications that would help improve and preserve the Ottawa River. This event involved presentations by environmental experts and government representatives, as well as a discussion by Alexandara Cousteau, granddaughter of the legendary explorer, Jacques Cousteau, on water preservation benefits from the social tech/digital connections being established.

IBM has a history of involvement in water issues in Canada and has partnered across the country to implement smarter water solutions for many years. Lila Adamec, the IBM Ecosystem Toronto City Leader, was the key leader for this event from IBM, helping to establish the sponsorship and promotion of Bluemix (http://ibm.biz/Aquahacking) as part of the event. More than a dozen teams submitted applications as part of the AquaHacking event. Those teams that chose to use IBM’s Bluemix as their platform were awarded bonus points for their solution scoring. Environmental and technical experts worked closely with the coders on their applications and submissions. The applications were then evaluated by a jury of experts ranging from environmental and technical backgrounds.

The First place award for the AquaHacking was split between the My River team, who created an app enabling citizens to easily report water issues, allowing municipalities to resolve issues quickly and the River Ranger team, who built a geospatial social network, enabling members to view and share information with others based on shared geographic regions. The Aqua Radar team, led by IBM’s Nick Edgar, won the competition’s Future Star award for their app that looks at hydrometric data and lets users pull data based on locations. All of these solutions were built using IBM’s Bluemix platform (http://ibm.biz/Aquahacking).